After carpet, such as broadloom or tufted carpet, is made it is usually cut to a segment of a desired length and rolled into a roll for storage and/or shipping. The carpet segment is usually wound around a hollow cardboard cylinder or core. Depending on the type of carpet and its method of manufacture, the carpet, and therefore the carpet roll, can vary in width. However, much of the carpet currently manufactured has a width between approximately 12 feet and approximately 15 feet. Moreover, depending on the length of a carpet segment in a carpet roll, the diameter of the roll will very from approximately a foot to approximately several feet.
In order to protect carpet during storage and/or shipment, a roll of carpet is usually wrapped in a plastic film. This is typically performed manually with one person positioned at each end of a carpet roll. The carpet roll typically sits on a pair of rotatably driven rollers. The two operators actuate the rollers in a synchronized action to rotate the carpet roll. The people positioned on the ends of the carpet roll manually pull plastic film from a roll positioned above the roll of carpet and pull the plastic film around the roll of carpet as it rotates. Then, at least one of those people must seal the plastic film on the roll of carpet and cut the plastic film free from the supply roll. Finally, the plastic film in the ends of the rolls must be inserted into the cardboard core and a core insert placed in the core to retain the plastic film therein. This manual process is labor intensive. It is also fraught with potential for injury to the people performing the foregoing tasks.
Thus, there is a need for an automated process for wrapping rolls of material, especially carpet, in plastic film, sealing the plastic film on the roll of material and cutting the plastic film free from the supply roll. It would also be desirable to have an automated process for sealing the plastic film on at least one end of the roll of material and for automatically inserting a core insert into the core.